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Canadian Mega-Quarry Stopped The saga of the Canadian MegaQuarry is over. The application to build a massive quarry in Melancthon Township near Orangeville, Ontario, Canada, has been withdrawn. The Highland Companies, which had planned the quarry, also intends to discontinue its efforts to restore the rail corridor through Dufferin County. In addition, Highland announced that John Lowndes has resigned from his role as president and has no further involvement with the company. ���While we believe that the quarry would have brought significant economic benefit to Melancthon Township and served Ontario���s well-documented need for aggregate, we acknowledge that the application does not have sufficient support from the community and government to justify proceeding with the approval process,��� said John Scherer of The Highland Companies. Highland said it will continue to focus on its farms and on supplying its customers with high quality potatoes and other crops. The company is proud of the improvements it has made through modernizing equipment and storage facilities as well as enhancing food and worker safety. The Ontario government ordered an environmental assessment of the project last September, which the province had previously not stipulated as a prerequisite for the development of quarries, according to CBC News. ���We would have preferred maybe a regulatory environment that did not change midway through the process,��� said Scherer in an interview with CBC News. Other business factors also factored into the decision to not pursue the application, he said. The scope of the project, which would have been developed on prime farmland owned by the company near Orangeville, northwest of Toronto, earned it the moniker ���mega-quarry.��� It would have spanned 937 hectares ��� about onethird the size of downtown Toronto ��� and create a crater 1�� times as deep as Niagara Falls. Those opposed to the project were concerned about losing a massive swath of rich farmland and worried about the quarry���s effect on the water table. The company had said the limestone quarry would have provided an essential supply of aggregate, used to build everything from homes to roads. But the proposal was met with fierce opposition from the community and beyond. The Highland Companies consists of a group of private investors in the U.S. and Canada and is involved in farming and aggregates, including a large potato farming operation. E Missouri Quarry Denied Pemit The Eastern District of the Missouri Court of Appeals has de��� nied a motion by Strack Excavating LLC of Cape Girardeau to operate a quarry near a Jackson, Mo., high school and has set a briefing schedule for the parties involved in the appeals process. Strack Excavating had sought from the appeals court approval to mine its 76���acre quarry during the course of the appeal, but the motion was denied without comment, according to a re��� port in the Southeast Missourian. The court also announced that Saxony Lutheran High School, the respondent, has until Dec. 10 to file a brief with the court. Strack Excavating and the Missouri Land Reclamation Com��� mission's briefs are due Jan. 2, with Saxony Lutheran's reply due Jan. 15. In circuit court last month, Saxony Lutheran argued the land commission was prohibited by law from issuing a permit to a quarry that has a boundary within 1,000 ft. of an accredited www.rockproducts.com school. At the time the permit was issued, Strack's mine���plan boundary was 55 ft. from Saxony's property. But, in response to a change in state law, the commission modified the permit to require a larger buffer before giving approval. The permit to Strack was granted under the condition that its boundary be 1,000 ft. from school property. In response, Strack claimed that vacating the permit would be an undue hardship that effectively would shut down the quarry. Judge William Syler sided with Saxony Lutheran and reversed the commission's decision, vacated the permit, and sent it back to them to reconsider the application. He also denied Strack's request to run the quarry during the appeals process. Strack still has a permit that allows it to sell dirt and crush limestone that has already been mined at the quarry, but the decision of the appeals court halts any further mining. The case will be argued before the appeals court in February.E ROCKproducts ��� DECEMBER 2012 35